


when I awake, you’ll disappear; back to the shadows, with all I hold dear.

by angelica_barnes



Series: ABC [14]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bi Peter Parker, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, Grief/Mourning, Hope, Minor Character Death, Multi, Peter Parker-centric, chosen family, envisioned with tom holland as peter parker, not sure if that's important so, slight homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 20:41:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20014495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelica_barnes/pseuds/angelica_barnes
Summary: five people peter parker finds a home in and the one person who makes him one.14. never (knew i needed you)(that's an avril lavigne "falling fast" lyric btw)





	when I awake, you’ll disappear; back to the shadows, with all I hold dear.

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from "Still Here" by Digital Daggers
> 
> PLAYLIST:
> 
> Still Here - Digital Daggers (Peter)  
> Never Really Over - Katy Perry (Gwen)  
> Surrender - Natalie Taylor (Miles)  
> Burn It Down - Billy Lockett (Liz)  
> America - XYLØ (Tony)  
> Stay - Post Malone (cover by Madilyn Bailey) (Wade)  
> I Don’t Care - Ed Sheeran ft. Justin Beiber (MJ)
> 
> enjoy!

**I’ve been hoping somebody loves you in the ways I couldn’t.**

**somebody’s taking care of all of the mess I made,**

**someone you don’t have to change.**

**I’ve been hoping someone will love you.**

**let me go.**

**\- Hailee Steinfeld**

  
  


**1.**

Peter Parker first falls in love in second grade, when Gwen Stacy offers him a red crayon because no one else will share with him. She has bright blue eyes and soft blonde hair that bounces in pigtails, and her overalls look a million times more comfortable than Peter’s own scratchy sweater.

He envies her, for awhile, because why should she get to have comfy overalls when he gets a stupid sweater knitted by Aunt May, but she’s too nice for him to really hate - y’know, with all the ferocity that a teeny tiny second grader can muster.

Gwen offers him the peanut butter half of her sandwiches, complaining loudly that she only likes jelly but her mother won’t make her lunch right. She makes Peter laugh with remarks like that, and as they grow, “Peanut” becomes a natural nickname on Gwen’s lips, the same way he mumbles “Jelly” into her shoulder when she hugs him goodbye every day.

Gwen moves away during the summer in between fifth and sixth grade, and Peter is left to brave middle school alone, because Aunt May and Uncle Ben say it’s too expensive to fly all the way to California for just a jar of jelly.

**2.**

Wade Wilson is the second person Peter loves, though he doesn’t realize that’s what that feeling was until much later. Much, much later.

Wade has long blonde hair like Gwen, but it hangs down over his face instead of staying brushed back. He wears baggy clothes and leather jackets that are too big for him, with scruffy and vandalized sneakers on his feet. He’s the first person Peter’s met who’s got a family like his - poor and always a little bit sad.

Peter grows accustomed to Wade’s snarky humor, which is so much harsher than Gwen’s sunny laughter. Wade ruffles Peter’s hair and slings an arm around his shoulders as they’re walking down the hall, and Peter likes it when Wade touches him. It settles something warm and bubbly in his stomach, something that makes him think he’s sick for a few weeks until Aunt May checks his temperature and tells him it must be something else.

In truth, Peter never really falls in love with Wade. He falls in love with the way Wade makes him feel - safe and worthy, like he exists. Wade is the big brother that Peter’s always wanted, the one he was supposed to be to the baby his mother died with so long ago.

Wade disappears halfway through eighth grade, when Peter’s still in sixth, and he learns through the grape vine that Wade’s sick. Peter wonders what kind of sickness could keep a kid out of school for long, until Aunt May tucks him in and tells him it’s the kind of sickness that leaves people breathless.

Then Peter believes that Wade has what he felt whenever Wade touched him, except that made Peter feel good, and this sickness drains Wade of feelings until all that’s left of his smiles are photographs.

**3.**

Peter meets Liz on his last day in eighth grade, and she reminds him of a sunflower the way Wade reminded him of a venus flytrap. He falls in love with her quickly, almost instantaneously, and she falls right back.

They spend hours together over the summer. On the swings, holding hands. In the meadow, arms around each other. Behind the slide, where he kisses her for the first time and she blushes and laughs like he’s a inside joke that’ll never get old.

He thinks he loves her the most, since she hasn’t left him and it doesn’t seem like she’s going to. Aunt May encourages all of this when he tells her, holds his small hands in both of hers and grins wildly. Uncle Ben is a little more cynical, his voice gruff as he tells Peter not to “get your hopes up, kid”.

Peter does anyway.

Liz gives him a ring pop two months after they meet, with a note asking if he’ll marry her because that’s what her mother told her people in love do. Peter agrees and brushes his lips across her cheek, their faces warm, awashed in sunlight.

They both wear flower crowns to their wedding, exchanging mood rings their parents bought them at the dollar store, and their families sit in the audience and laugh and share glances like,  _ Oh, kids. Remember when we were like that? _

And he’s happy. And so is she. And for awhile, they’re so happy that they don’t hear the things other people say, blind and deaf in their little bubble. But on their first day of high school, a well-meaning teacher pops that bubble with sharp words, “You’re too young to be married.”

If their marriage isn’t real, they decide, then their love is, but that begs the question - if they had a wedding but their marriage isn’t real, then does that mean that just because they have a relationship doesn’t mean their love is real? Is what they’re feeling not love? Has it ever been?

They both argue yes, and agree for awhile, but teenagers are mean and don’t take too kindly to a boy who wears a mood ring promising him to a girl he fake-married. So he takes it off and hides it on a chain under his shirt, explaining it to her two days later.

But she’s seen him without it, and the doubt grows and grows until it overwhelms their love to the point that they wonder if it’s even worth it to keep on.

They decide it isn’t, taking off their rings and placing them in separate drawers, and they have a fake meeting with their families with fake papers to settle a fake divorce.

**4.**

Mary Jane hates it when he calls her that, so he uses MJ the second time he says hi. The feeling of love blossoms slower in his chest this time, the same way breath comes slower in Aunt May’s chest now.

MJ becomes his best friend in a matter of days, slipping into his and Ned’s nerd debates with ease and grace. She’s smart and she knows it, and it makes Peter smile, how she can dismantle his harddrives and tinker them back together in minutes, how his borrowed high tech becomes her plaything.

Seeing Liz still hurts, and so does looking too long at the photographs of Gwen on his walls. He’s erased Wade from his life completely, working to make his mind forget until Wade becomes a background character in some other Peter’s biopic.

MJ doesn’t make Peter hurt. She makes him smile, and she makes him laugh, and he likes the way she braids his hair in class whenever they watch a movie because she truly doesn’t give a shit whether it distracts him.

And that’s what MJ is, really. A distraction.

But she’s exactly what he needs, and he - he loves her. He really does, and it scares him, until he realizes that this isn’t like Gwen’s blush, or Wade’s butterflies, or Liz’s bubble. He just loves her, isn’t in love with her or even halfway there. They’re just MJ and Peter, best friends against the world.

He lays his head on her shoulder and closes his eyes when he figures this out, putting himself at the mercy of a twenty pairs of watchful eyes and twenty mouths of relentless teasing. But she’s his best friend, and she’s the only one whose opinion he cares about.

And she doesn’t move away, disappear or leave. She stays, and she finds his mood ring and slips it back on his finger with a grin, telling him that it’s the people who go that make room for the ones who stick around.

**5.**

The first and last boy Peter falls in love with is Miles Morales, an awkward black kid with a super strict father and a troublemaker uncle. Peter hates how Miles makes him feel, helpless and cold all over, like there’s always someone watching his every move. Boys can’t like boys, Uncle Ben says, and Peter can’t let on that he does.

When Uncle Ben is shot, Peter dies and breathes easier than he has in ages, in an instant. He mourns the man he loved like a father the same way he’d mourned the man who actually was. Aunt May becomes sort of blank, unable to process the gaping hole suddenly in their lives, and the only one Peter can talk to is Miles.

MJ is around, sure. So is Ned, the two of them offering time to talk and arms to sleep in and worried glances over Dungeons & Dragons. But Miles’ uncle dies soon after in the same sort of “accident”, in a back alleyway that’s dark, in front of Miles, who fails to be fast enough to save him and carries that guilt with him everywhere.

Miles’ hand is soft in Peter’s when he first takes it, on a rainy Monday morning as they walk down the hall to the first class they’re attending after losing fractions of their respective worlds. Miles doesn’t pull away, squeezing Peter’s fingers, and it just becomes routine after awhile, something that feels as natural as breathing did for so long.

Miles kisses Peter gently, softly, but only ever with a smile, saying he wants to remember Peter in happy moments. Peter wants to argue that he wants all there is with Miles, the good and the bad, but for now, when Miles shushes him, he has to agree.

They become each other’s safe place, guarded by hoodies and comic books and identical spider bite scars on their wrists. Their secrets come alive with each other, and will die the same way if either of them has anything to say about it. Miles is the one Peter wants by his side when he trudges through the storms of life, like Aunt May’s funeral five months after Uncle Ben’s.

Peter considers telling Miles all of this and then realizes he doesn’t have to, because Miles likes to give him flowers with dewdrops and sprint to the car instead of grabbing an umbrella, because Miles isn’t scared of the rain.

**1.**

Peter’s doorbell rings at one a.m., when he, MJ, Miles, and Ned are all huddled around a game board playing  _ Life _ while ignoring the TV, turned up to the loudest volume while  _ Oceans 11 _ unfolds on the screen. They all share a glance and Peter shrugs, standing to answer it with a kiss to Miles’ knuckles.

On the other side is Tony Stark, standing cockily with a sarcastic grin and a sports car behind him. He cracks a joke about Peter’s troubles disrupting Tony’s sleep, saying he couldn’t possibly allow them to continue since he can’t wear sunglasses to hide his bags indoors.

Peter launches himself into Tony’s arms before he can even force the real question out, burying his face in Tony’s neck. The other three come to see what’s happening, only to find Peter locked in an emotional embrace with a man they’ve only ever known from the news.

Peter packs all of his things up that morning in the dark, with the help of MJ and Miles, interrupted every once in awhile with wrestling and kisses. Ned waits by the car, ready to load stuff in the trunk, and Tony makes lunch from snack foods and Nesquik, always nearby for a hug or a kiss on the side of the head.

It’s a melancholy time, because Peter’s just lost the last of his family, and it feels surreal, the fact that he’s had his heart broken so many times in such a small amount of years. The fact that his family is gone, dead and buried.

But as he’s zipping his last suitcase closed, watching Miles and MJ laugh about something that undoubtedly has to do with his underwear, listening to Tony sing Pink Floyd loudly and off-key from downstairs, tasting Ned’s cinnamon gum recycled from three days ago and bland from hopping back and forth between their mouths, he realizes that it doesn’t matter.

Peter Parker’s got a whole new family right here.

  
  


**I forgot to say out loud how beautiful you really are to me.**

**I can’t be without, and I need you.**

**I’m sorry.**

**please, please, don’t leave me.**

**\- P!NK**

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed :) thank you for reading!


End file.
